Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I wrote about this storefront before as Parkland Pharmacy. CVS was the successor to Parkland and made what was a rather interesting and quirky pharmacy into yet another chain drugstore.

I'm not a big fan of CVS in general -- for some reason they never seem quite as nice as Rite-Aid or my preferred store, Walgreen's. They do have a nice "no scent at all" liquid laundry detergent though, and this store was fine for what it was.

They have left Parkland Plaza for the new corner lot across the street opened up by the demolition of the Cinderella HoJo. When I took these pictures, there was no indication of what, if anything, would come to occupy this spot. Parkland Plaza is already hurting; they certainly don't need a longterm vacancy here.

UPDATE 24 June 2009: The move is complete, and the CVS is now open at the old HoJo site:

UPDATE 29 Oct 2010 -- To date nothing has moved into the CVS spot at Parkland Plaza:

UPDATE 4 July 2022: Update tags, add map icon.

I wrote about this building when it had closed as a Goody's and was about to open as a book remainder store.

I finally did get there during the holiday season, and found that I was able to pick up some Disney Princess and other kids books and knick-nacks for Christmas at pretty reasonable prices. I don't have the patience I used to have to comb over every book in this type of store for the odd bargain, but I did pick up a couple of books for myself as well. At the time, the staff wasn't sure how long the store would be open, but hoped it would go into the new year, and I believe it did and a few months beyond that, making a pretty good run for this type of thing. The building is empty again now which can't be great for the area, especially with the empty Circuit City across the road.

UPDATE 15 February 2017 -- Added some pictures of the place in operation.

The original location of Pier 1 Imports, or at least the first one that I recall was in the back of the Cedar Terrace shopping center on Garner's Ferry Road, in the space now occupied by a Fred's.

My mother was into "quirky", and interested in other cultures, so we often stopped at Pier 1 if we were in the area. The way I recall it, the store ran heavily to wicker, rattan, and exotic umbrella baskets. As a kid, I cared vary little for the furnishing aspects of the place, but was fascinated by the offbeat food items and cheap import toys. I remember in particular some sort of (Japanese?) candy squares that were wrapped in rice paper, and you ate them paper and all(!). We actually got some of those, but my I could only look in horrid fascination at the chocolate covered ants, which we never did get. I don't remember most of the toys, but I did get a harmonica there once, which was made in China (an actual communist country!) and seemed impossibly exotic with a colorful embossed box, and instructions printed on transparent paper in characters that weren't even in the alphabet, much less in English. I've still got the harmonica and box though the instructions seem to have vanished at some point -- I never did learn to play it..

I think Pier 1 moved to Two Notch in front of Columbia Mall after that, though for some reason we never went there. I think I read somewhere that the chain had fallen on hard times and rethought their concept. I don't believe there's one in town at all now, though I'm sure you could find chocolate covered ants somewhere.

UPDATE 19 May 2009:

OK, the consensus in the comments is that I had the Cedar Terrace location of Pier 1 wrong, and rather than being in what is now Fred's, it was in what is now Sub Station II & Steve-O's, so here's a picture of that storefront:

And as long as I'm posting a picture of it, I'll give you my Sub Station II story, even though it hasn't closed. At some point in the 80s or 90s, I went to lunch with my sister, and as she lived fairly near to Garner's Ferry at the time, we ended up in Cedar Terrace at Sub Station II. As it happened, I wasn't really in the mood for a cold sub, and I saw on their behind-the-counter menu board "Italian Sausage Sandwich with Peppers & Onions". I thought Hey! I love those at the State Fair, and I never get to have one anywhere else., so I ordered it.

I should perhaps have been apprehensive as there was no indication of a griddle anywhere, but we went to our table and chit-chatted a bit. I noticed though that the counter person seemed to be dipping something out of a pot behind the counter. A few minutes later our order was called and I found my sandwich to be two soggy boiled links placed in a bun with no condiments of any kind. Great. Well, the sausage was obviously going to be what it was, but Hey, I asked the counter person, where are my peppers & onions?

Oh, that's just what's written on the sign. We haven't had those in years

While I'm updating the post, I should also note I was wrong about there being no Pier 1s in town. There is actually one quite close to the old Garners ferry location at the Woodhill Target complex:

UPDATE 30 June 2020: Updating tags, adding map icon.

I don't eat at Lizard's Thicket that often, but it's good Southern comfort food. I recall working in Kansas for about a month once, and being so glad when I got back, drove out of the airport here and saw the Liz on Airport Boulevard. There are times when only field-peas-over-rice will do.

Someone described Lizard's Thicket here in the comments of some post or another as a "hermit crab restaurant", ie: one that likes to let another restaurant build the building and fail and then moves into the empty shell. It strikes me as a sound strategy, but that being the case, I can't speak to what was in this building before Liz. This particular store was a bit unusual in that it was one of the two Lizes closest together of all those I am aware of (the other is just a mile or so down Two Notch towards Spring Valley). It was also the closest Liz to our house, and the one we went to most often. I remember two things in particular about it. First, they had a pot-plant by the register which was connected to a lamp. Through some sort of capacitance effect, if you touched the leaves of the plant, the lamp would turn on, cycle through dim, normal and bright and then off again. Second, once when we were eating there, the waitress subtracted the cost of our drinks from the bill rather than adding it. I've had days like that..

The building sat empty for a bit after Liz left (to go down to a new location [and building!] near Sandhill) and then the current tenant moved in. From the amount of time it was taking, and the car I often saw parked there, my impression was that the new owner was doing most of the work him(?)-self. I think too, that when it first opened, the "Korean" rubric had not been added. I haven't eaten there, but it seems to draw a good lunch crowd. I doubt there's peas-over-rice though.

UPDATE 17 June 2025: Updating tags and adding map icon.

I noticed this defunct building / strip mall on Sunset Boulevard recently when I stopped to take some pictures of the old Quincy's building next door.

Of the three businesses that google suggests were here, I can only sort of recall hearing about or perhaps seeing Pizza House. At one point back in the 90s, I went on a quest for Columbia's best pizza and hit a large number of pizza restaurants, but never this one. At this remove I'm not sure why. It could be the distance, but during that time, I did try the nearby Grecian Gardens for pizza, so I doubt that was it. It could be that it was one of those places where you order at the counter rather than at your table -- I try to avoid those. Or perhaps it looked decrepit even back then.

The other two businesses I'm fairly sure I never heard of. Debbie's Plants seems like a fairly self-explanatory name, but not one that would attract me, and the medical facility seems to have either been eldercare or mental health care or perhaps both.

I see that the whole complex is for sale. It looks like it would take fairly extensive work to make it look decent again -- it wouldn't surprise me if whoever buys it just knocks everything down.

UPDATE 11 April 2010: Added 1977 Bellsouth yellow page ad.

UPDATE 18 October 2012 -- As I speculated above, the whole place was knocked down some time ago. I have a more extensive set of pictures (though taken on a much less sunny day) somewhere, but for now these from 19 February 2011 tell the story:

UPDATE 13 February 2017 -- This strip is now Salsaritas and Starbucks:

The bakery which was the first tenant I can recall in the Triangle Rent-a-Car building must have set some sort of record for opened and closed. I barely had time to notice that it was there, and then it wasn't. I think the concept was sort of Atlanta / Panera but with a drive-through. From this Richland County delinquent tax spreadsheet for 2004, which lists the business entity as Buns Spring Valley LLC, I'm guessing that the place was probably called Buns, though I can specifically remember that.

I don't know why they didn't make it, but my own theory, based on seeing the place but yet not stopping, is that the location was too hard to get too to make an attractive drive-through combined with the fact that the strip mall it's in is not really a "destination", and the fact of it's having a drive-through kind of devalued it if you were in the mood for a Panera type sit-down experience.

UPDATE 5 May 2009: Consensus in the comments is that this place was also a Schlotzsky's deli at one time, so I have added that to the post title.

UPDATE 7 Sep 2010: Got the correct name for "Buns" and updated the post title with Panino Bakery and Cafe. Also added Hardee's -- see the comments!

UPDATE 19 June 2021: Adding tags and map icon.

I don't believe I ever shopped this store, but I think it was on Rosewood for most of my life. The building is one of the older style Pigs, much like that of the Covenant Road Pig and the Marshall Street Pig, though in this case the follow-on store has not retained the Pig's marquee letters the way Kimbrell's has.

The current tenant is Dollar Tree an "everything for a dollar store. It appears from this real estate listing that the building itself is again for sale, though Dollar Tree has a six-year lease. I notice that they are building a lot of residences on the other side of Rosewood (and a bit down the hill) -- too bad the PIg didn't hold out another few years, as that would be a new customer base (though the store is small for the current Piggly WIggly concept).

UPDATE 27 April 2009: I have updated the closing date in the post title from "2000s" to the "July 2002" date supplied by Dave in the comments.

it seems to me that that Leesburg Road used to be more fashionable than it is now. Perhaps since I-77 came through, it's a bit harder to get to, and to describe how to get to. Or it could just be my imagination, since we didn't go there much even back in the day.

In fact, I have only a very vague memory of having heard about Dick's Flamingo Club at all. If I hadn't seen the ad while I was xeroxing the "restaurants" section from the 1970 phonebook, I'm sure I wouldn't ever have thought of it again. I do notice that it was open until 11pm on weeknights, and it seems to me that more restaurants were open late in 1970 than are today. Nowdays, if you can't get there before 10, or even 9 in a lot of cases, you are pretty well hosed.

The property is currently occupied by Parklane Seafood House whose sign proclaims that they are celebrating their 30th anniversary, having started in 1978. Of course, I think they actually were on Parklane then, so I'm not sure the 1978 date was the actual closure year for Dick's.

UPDATE 5 October 2021: Adding map icon.

In my mind, Hardee's has been going down hill since they got rid of Gilbert Giddyup & Speedy McGreedy, not to mention "charco" grilling. For years though, the real reason to stop at a Hardee's when you got off the Interstate rather than McDonalds or Burger King, was for the ice.

There are a number of different types of commercial ice makers for restaurants. Some make lenticular spherical sections, others make partially hollow cubes, and some make "chewy" ice. Honestly, I don't know why a restaurant would want anything but the last kind, but some do and did. Hardee's though could be counted on for the chewy ice for years and then in a fit of madness, they gave it up. Next they started emphasing chicken such that I couldn't even go into the stores any more because of the chicken smell. Finally they were bought out by Carl's Junior wandered aimlessly for years but of late seem to have grabbed onto a workable concept with the "thickburger" line (though I have yet to sample one).

Anyway, that's all besides the point to this pair of local playground changes sent in by commenter Melanie. The "before" shots come from her, and I took the "after" ones last weekend:

The tall metal man was the playground at the Hardees beside Dutch Square before they tore it down. I think this picture was taken 1995 give or take a year.

and:

Hardees ditched another of their coolest playgrounds sometime in the new millenia. Here is a pic taken in 1995-6 of the Hardees playground from Garners Ferry where I77 goes over. They had this playground at least since I was born because I remember it always being there.

The metal man is indeed way cool. I can only speculate that either the insurance became too burdensome, or playgrounds don't really fit in with the Carl's Junior conception of Hardee's.

UPDATE 21 April 2009: Added "Dutch Square" to the post title.

UPDATE 18 December 2012: Changed the location for the "Garners Ferry" Hardees from 7942 Garners Ferry Road to 120 Veterans Road. (The Hardee's in question is not actually on Garners Ferry, but a side-street, and the Garners Ferry Address is another Hardee's entirely).

UPDATE 10 April 2019 -- This location has now closed, the closing is here. Also updated tags and added map icon.

Dreamland was one of the many small motels that lined Highway 1 ("The Camden Highway" it was called on that stretch) when it was a major inter-state (as opposed to "Interstate") artery. Since we lived in town and had no reason to stay in a Columbia motel, the place probably would have gone without me being fully aware it was there except that in the 70s we had swimming lessons there.

I'm not sure how it works today, except that it's different, but in the 70s, it seemed that most swimming lessons were sponsored, or perhaps just certified, by The Red Cross. They had a standardized curriculum with different proficency levels. The ones I recall were: Beginner, Advanced Beginer and Intermediate. I suppose there may have been an Advanced somewhere, but I never got that far. In fact, I think I had Advanced Beginner about three times. To a certain extent this was just to get us out of the house during the summer and I don't think my mother was overly concerned about the "level" we were taking as long as they covered the "don't drown" part.

As you can see by the Yellow Pages ad, by 1970, Dreamland found itself by the new I-20. I guess this had plusses, but the minuses were that the Interstates were homogenizing the country to the extent that people expected a national brand motel at an "I" exit, and that the long-haul traffic on US-1 was drying up. That's my speculation at any rate. Whatever the reason, they decided to make a little money by holding swimming lessons in the motel pool. My mother liked this as she could in theory drop us off there and then go to K-Mart or the grocery store for an hour or so before coming back for us. I don't remember much abou the lessons, I suspect it was another Advanced Beginner session, and we did in fact get through the "don't drown" part.

A few years after that, Dreamland was torn down to make way for the Spring Valley Theater which was in turn torn down to make way for Lowes (which is still there). The picture above is of the Lowe's parking lot more or less where I think the theater and motel were.

UPDATE 13 October 2009: Added scanned postcard and the text from the back.